Boxing and Firing

Dayak man from the village of Ensibau in West Kalimantan setting the dried leaves and twigs that he has crammed into a "box" cut into the trunk of this Dipterocarpus tree on fire to get the dried damar resin (see Damar) flowing again. This technique of collecting resin from wild trees is called "boxing and firing". I don't imagine that the trees like it very much. [NOTE: For the obsessively observant, the villager from Ensibau shown in the photo above, is the same one shown here cutting shingles (from a similar Dipterocarpus species)]. 

Planting Stick

Pak Sukri (see Peat Farmer) shows the huge planting stick used in the peat swamp-based rice fields in Punggur, West Kalimantan. Granddaughter in the background looks on with interest.  

Heading Home After School

Dayak boy walks home after school through the tembawang surrounding the village of Tae (see Jungle Gym)  in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.  

Cutting Shakes

Using a wooden stave as a mallet and his parang, or bush knife, as a froe, this Dayak villager from West Kalimantan cuts roofing shakes out of a downed Dipterocarpus trunk. Same resin infused (and extremely resistant) hardwood as recorded in the village of Ensibau (see Shingle Maker). Neither craftsman is wearing shoes as he chops away. [NOTE: It takes a forester to notice this, but the fellow in the upper right background of the image is wrapping a d-tape around a tree to measure it's diameter. Apparently, we were running transects when we passed the shake cutter].

Social Forestry Development Project

A few details on some recent posts about West Kalimantan (see Hedda and Ernst and Provisions). The Social Forestry Development Project, or SFDP, (map shown above) was the GTZ project that Ernst Kuester was team leader of and with which I worked for several years. Community management of an old logging concession containing over 102,000 hectares. Fifty-eight Dayak villages and four different languages (not dialects). Dark green areas on the map are intact Dipterocarp hill forest. That needed to be inventoried and described. Which is where I came in.

Satellite image of the SFDP site is shown above. Red squares are the 70 inventory plot clusters that we located throughout the area in a stratified, random fashion (see Global Positioning System). Recorded 455 tree species and compiled a massive database (1419 entries) of plant uses. Incredible amount of work. Great fun. [NOTE: I was walking through the forests of interior Borneo with Dayaks counting and measuring trees almost 20 years ago. This project was visionary (thx, Ernst)].

Provisions

Dividing up provisions among the field crews before heading out to the forest to start the inventory work (see Field Crews and Western Borneo). Mostly bags of rice, salt, and cooking oil, but it looks like we also took a lot of cans of Coke. [NOTE: I think the name of this Dayak village is Darok in the Bonti sub-province. I think].  

Warung Kopi

Found an image from the wonderful coffee shop, or warung kopi, in Punggur that I mentioned several weeks ago (see Punggur). Customers look pretty happy with their breakfast, i.e. coffee, a roll, and maybe a pickled egg (shown in the jars with the orange brine). [NOTE: Best part about this place is the view].

Blacksmiths

A group of blacksmiths in West Kalimantan making a parang, or bush knife, out of the leaf spring from a Toyota Land Cruiser.  Interesting/scary that everyone is wearing sandals as they pound the red hot metal. [NOTE: I actually had an old Toyota Land Cruiser (40 Series) when I lived in West Kalimantan in the early 1990's. Amazing vehicle].

Punggur

This is what it looks like when you come into the little town of Punggur on the coast of West Kalimantan by boat (see String of Pearls and Peat Farmer). Looks like low tide, and you have to climb up a ladder to get into town. I remember that there is a wonderful little "warung kopi", i.e. coffee shop, right on the pier. Strong, hot coffee served in a small glass with lots of sweetened condensed milk. [NOTE: Colors are muddy because the image was scanned from an old slide].

Bapaks From Bagak (From the Archive)

Pak Afong (with the baseball cap) and Pak Po'on (with the towel), both Selako Dayaks from the village of Bagak Sawah in West Kalimantan, helped a lot with my research on illipe nuts at the Raya-Pasi Nature Reserve (seeIllipe Nut III). Pak Afong was the official forest guard at Raya-Pasi, and he was the one who first told me about the annually fruiting illipe nut and helped me lay out and monitor my research plots. He was also the one who stopped me from stepping on the cobra (thx, Afong). Pak Po'on, an older gentleman who always went to the field in flip-flops, would help out when Pak Afong was not available. Po'on loved to talk and was an enthusiastic kretek smoker. The only thing that he would bring to the field was his towel and parang, so whenever it rained we would both hunker down under my poncho. Invariably, Pak Po'on would light up a kretek and start telling a story, usually about the old days during the Japanese occupation. The smoke under the poncho would get so thick that I couldn't see his face. It was a pleasure to work with both of these men. [NOTES: Pak Po'on's parang is stuck in the durian tree to the left of his head. The Indonesian word for tree is pohon.]